In honor of Valentine's Day next week, today's Thoughtful Thursday features love poetry from an array of poets. We begin with a couple of love poems from Langston Hughes, whom poet Elizabeth Alexander rightly calls “'our' poet laureate, our'Shakespeare in Harlem.'" Then on a poem from Nikki Giovanni, one of the world's best known African American poets, who speaks [...]
It may not come as news to you that there is a nasty strain of the flu virus--H3N2--sweeping the nation. This flu has been sending folks to the hospital in record numbers, has killed at least 37 children nationwide and it is on track to become the worst flu epidemic since the swine flu nearly a decade ago. Why [...]
How much time do your children spend on their smartphones? How is it affecting their attention spans, their interaction with friends and family, their mental health? Two large Apple shareholders--an activist hedge fund and the California State Teachers Retirement System-- have written a letter to Apple asking it to focus on this important issue by developing software that would [...]
Today's Thoughtful Thursday features a delightful video from PBS News Hour in which author Jason Reynolds explains how poetry can help reluctant readers learn to love literature. Reynolds notes, "The separate stanzas aid and perpetuate a kind of incremental reading one small chunk at a time" which makes it much more approachable and enjoyable. Definitely worth viewing--it will inspire [...]
If you are on the East Coast as we are, you are are experiencing the aftermath a snowstorm of epic proportions, which has been called a "bomb cyclone", "bombogenesis" and a winter hurricane. Whatever you want to call it, it has dumped a lot of snow on us, and the winds are whipping around at high speeds and at [...]
Anxiety is a normal and developmentally appropriate emotion in children which can even be helpful, e.g., motivating them to study for an upcoming test. But anxiety is truly problematic and becomes a disorder when it impairs basic functioning or causes serious, often physical distress. What should we do to help our children with this? A recent Wall Street Journal [...]
Baby, it's cold outside! As the first day of winter approaches, here in the Northeast the temperature has been dropping and the wind has been whipping up. We've gone from light breezes to gusty gales, and we have had our few first snowfalls. Just in time for the holidays! Today's Thoughtful Thursday celebrates the chilly days of almost-winter, with [...]
As we hope everyone knows, last night the state of Alabama elected Doug Jones to the U.S. Senate. Jones, the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama who prosecuted the Klan, beat Judge Roy Moore, former chief justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama, who was twice elected to and then ousted from that position for refusing to [...]
Summer camp planning in December? Yes! It is not too early to start thinking about what your children will be doing in the summer of 2018. Camps start filling their spaces in earnest in January, but camp consultants are already hosting events this month to introduce parents to a variety of summer opportunities for children. What kind of activities [...]
As a seemingly endless stream of public figures are being fired for sexual harassment these days, the time is NOW to talk with our children about this topic. But how? There are two conversations to be had here: we need to have the "What is sexual harassment and why is it all over the news now?" conversation with all [...]